“Our Lord! Grant unto us wives and offspring who will be the coolness of our eyes.” (25:74)

Have you ever thought what ‘coolness of the eye’ means? People translate it in a lot of ways… somebody told me it was the equivalent of ‘Apple of the Eye’.

In the Arabic text though, it has a very different and beautiful meaning. The Arabs of that time used the expression in several instances that show the beauty of the Aayah. They used it to indicate tears of joy, i.e. they would use the expression to talk about something that brought tears of joy to their eyes. So, in the dua’ we are asking Allah subhaana wa ta’aala to make our families a reason for us to have tears of joy in our eyes.

Moreover, and this is the most beautiful: in the desert, when there is a sandstorm, they would wrap their turban around their nose etc. leaving only the eyes exposed. This obviously caused a lot of distress to the eyes. It is like the eyes were exposed to all the harm that the sandstorm brought. And when they reached a safe place, where they could open their turban back up and not have to cover their face and no longer needed to squint their eyes, they would say that their eyes have found coolness. Beautiful, isn’t it?

So by making this dua we are asking Allah swt to make our families (our spouses and our children) a safe haven from the chaos in the outside world, i.e. we come home from the outside world of chaos and we look at our families, it fills our eyes with tears of joy and we feel like we have finally come to a place where we can rest and relax.

Additionally, the construct of the sentence implies that we are asking Allah swt to provide us a safe haven especially at home (indicating how important it is that we find that safe haven). It is such a beautiful du’aa` subhaanAllah!